Event Horizon
by lucy2point0
Summary: A Vaughn-centric post-ep to ATY. Angst, S/V interaction... Chapters 1 & 2 reuploaded...had some chapter upload mixups....
1. Chapter 1

EVENT HORIZON  
  
By: lucy2point0, email: wendy@devil.com  
  
Rating: G-PG for this chapter  
  
Spoilers: Almost Thirty Years  
  
Disclaimer: This fantastic Alias world is SO not mine, but it does belong to JJ Abrams, ABC, yadda yadda.  
  
Notes: This is my first Alias fanfic. I just had to get it out and commit myself to this story so I don't abandon it with the other many illegible, half-hearted attempts during season one. :D  
  
Told from a Vaughn-centric POV.  
  
Feedback: Sure…  
  
Event horizon - the surface of a black hole : the boundary of a black hole at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light and beyond which nothing can escape from within it  
  
He watches with utter disbelief and panic at the scene unfolding before him.   
  
The roar of the water, nipping at her heels, just about drowns out her screams at him to move. Lightening fast, she closes the distance between them. She tries to grab his hand without stopping but ends up only pushing at him to move as she turns the corner.  
  
It is enough though. The push snaps him out of it and he turns and runs after her.  
  
He is following her blindly now, focused on her flyaway blue hair. They are sprinting down the hallway. He hears her call out to him breathlessly.  
  
"Vaughn…you still…with…me?"  
  
"Yeah," he bursts out. He is breathing hard, trying to keep up with her and not daring to look behind him.  
  
"Almost…there," she continues, more faintly.  
  
His leg muscles are starting to twitch and burn from fatigue. He had never been a good sprinter in high school or during agent training, he realizes belatedly and somewhat grimly, but maybe it was because he never had a good enough incentive to push himself beyond the limits…until now.  
  
He watches her eat up the distance between herself and the closing door in what seems to be a final finishing kick in her sprint and attempts to do the same. A split second later he sees her fly past the narrowing gap left by the closing door.  
  
"Vaughn!" he hears her scream.   
  
She is genuinely scared for him and it is enough for him to summon the last spurt of energy to make it the last few feet to the door. But as he nears the door and watches her scrabble for some kind of purchase to keep it open, he realizes that he is not going make it and he lets up slightly as he gets to the door.  
  
The door closes shut with a solid clang. He hits the door and pounds at it once, knowing that is not going to be enough to get it open.  
  
He moves over to the window of the door, praying she has kept running and has turned the last corner to get out of the building.  
  
But to his dismay she is still there. He watches a myriad of emotions cross her face, from shock, to disbelief, to fear and sorrow. It's the look of sorrow that troubles him the most.   
  
He looks at her intently, shaking his head almost imperceptibly, hoping she understands that he made his choice to come and help and this was a consequence of his choice.  
  
The roar of the water is almost deafening now. He turns briefly and sees the water advancing and knows in another few seconds he will likely be crushed from being sandwiched between the unyielding door and the force of the water.  
  
He takes a deep breath and braces himself as the water slams him brutally against the door. The force just about squeezes out all the air he has been holding in, leaving just enough for a little while.  
  
He pushes downward through the murky, churning darkness to the eerie rectangle of light glowing through the window and finds himself watching Sydney frantically attempting to break down the door with a fire extinguisher.  
  
He shakes his head and waves his hands in front of her to tell her there is no use and to get out. This time he is the one telling her to go, pushing at the door to tell her there is no use trying.  
  
Blackness is starting to creep into the edges of his vision. He knows he is almost out of air but he tries in vain to get her to warn her of the guard coming up behind her.   
  
But this time it is not enough. He is thrown hard against the door by another surge of water, and slammed into black unconsciousness.  
  
------------------------  
  
He is slowly suffocating in the darkness. The pressure inside his chest is hurting to the point of pain. He chokes and tries to cry out but he can't. All he can hear is the sound of gurgling, and he realizes after several seconds that he is the one doing it. His whole body seizes and clenches as he struggles to breathe.   
  
With a sudden rush warm water gushes out from his throat and he coughs and his eyes fly open. Another gush of water escapes his mouth and he gasps for air.  
  
He can barely see anything in the darkness. But what he can see is that he is lying sideways on the floor, in a factory or warehouse of some kind.  
  
"Vaughn." He is rolled onto his back now. "Vaughn, can you hear me?" It's Jack.  
  
He tells Jack he can barely see him. Jack shakes his head and asks where Sydney is. In between fits of coughing and gasping for air he tells Jack what he can remember leading up to the last memory he had of Sydney about to be ambushed from behind by a guard. In the dim light he sees Jack calculate what might have possibly happened, and if it was even more possible, his face becomes grimmer.  
  
He asks Jack how he found him. As Jack helps him sit up, he tells him.  
  
"I merely retraced the steps you and Sydney took to get into the lab. I went through the nightclub and the passageway you and Sydney pried open to get here. I came over to the entry point where Sydney entered to get to the lab and saw water. You should thank your coat maker because you were hanging by the entry point by a beltloop on a wire hook. Otherwise, judging from the water, you'd have likely ended up halfway to the East China Sea by now."  
  
Not knowing what to make of that statement, he asks Jack where Sydney might be and if she made it to the extraction point. Jack shakes his head.  
  
"She never made it. It's likely she was captured by Khasinau's guards, from your description." A short, tense pause. "She never should have stayed to save you."   
  
He looks at Jack for a moment, feeling a flash of anger. He tells Jack that he made sure that she got out and that he told her to go. Jack turns away, thinking for a few more moments, playing out possible scenarios.  
  
"Get up." Jack half-helps, half-hauls him up. He almost falls down again because his legs are so fatigued from sprinting so hard in his effort to make it to the door. With slow, deliberate pacing, Jack helps him out of the factory and out a back way to an alleyway, with a mini-van awaiting.  
  
Jack opens the driver's side door of the mini-van open.  
  
"Get in." He grits his teeth as he lifts each leg to get into the driver's seat. Once inside and seated, Jack hands him several maps and a comm unit.  
  
"I'm going to go get Sydney. I want you to stay right here. Study the street map. I may need you to pick us up from an extraction point if I can't get back here. You're on comm now."  
  
And with that Jack slams the door shut and disappears silently into the dark alleyway.  
  
And after a moment of silence, a voice from the back of the mini-van startles him.  
  
"Who are you?" 


	2. Chapter 2

EVENT HORIZON  
  
By: lucy2point0, email: wendy@devil.com  
  
Rating: G-PG for this chapter  
  
Spoilers: Almost Thirty Years  
  
Disclaimer: This fantastic Alias world is SO not mine, but it does belong to JJ Abrams, ABC and everyone else who is involved with the show.  
  
Notes: Told from a Vaughn-centric POV. Thanks very much for the all the enthusiastic responses to the first chapter. This chapter's an interlude of sorts pacewise before the action picks up again. :D  
  
Feedback: Sure...  
  
He turns slowly around in the driver's seat and is greeted by a ghastly and bloodied version of Will Tippin. It's all he can do to keep his face impassive at the sight.  
  
He quickly assesses Will's physical state. The left eye is half-shut and the mouth swollen and bleeding. Cuts and abrasions are all over the rest of his face. His grey sweatshirt is stained, matted with dark streaks of blood. Upon closer scrutinizing, he realizes that some of the blood stains are newer and fresher than others. Whatever Will had endured, he had endured it for a considerable amount of time.  
  
He suddenly realizes that Jack has not told him everything about the nature of the operation. No hostage for ransom would be treated like this...unless the hostage had information the kidnappers wanted...at any cost.  
  
All the information that was given to Will, as he explained when being debriefed at the safehouse in Los Angeles, was fed to him by his mysterious source. And the source, according to Jack, was more than likely Khasinau himself or someone close to him. It didn't make sense. What other information did Will know that Khasinau might want from him?  
  
"I said, who are you?" Will asks the question again, this time a bit more loudly.  
  
He shakes himself out of his thoughts and looks at him, not sure exactly how much to tell him.  
  
So he tells Will he works for Agent Bristow and that he volunteered for this operation. It is the truth, of sorts, he tells himself. Let him think that it's Jack that he is working with. The less Will knows about his connection to her, the safer he will likely be in the long run.  
  
Will seems to be satisfied with his answer, and is silent for a few seconds, staring into space.  
  
He wonders if he is having a flashback of his ordeal and tries to snap him out of it. He tries and goes for the obvious by saying Will looks a little worse for wear. Will focuses on him then, and lets out a small sigh.   
  
"Yeah. I guess...I am..a little banged up."  
  
He turns around and leans over to the right to rummage through the glove compartment. Finding a first-aid kit, he turns back around and extends it to Will. He suggests to Will that maybe he should get cleaned up before Agent Bristow gets back.  
  
Will takes the first-aid kit and opens it, looking for a roll of gauze and a bottle of antiseptic.  
  
He turns around again and shifts in the seat (it's not comfortable sitting in cold, clammy black leather), and turns the comm unit on.  
  
"Thank you." The words, from Will, are said with quiet gratitude.   
  
He looks at Will from the rearview mirror, and nods in acknowledgement.  
  
For the next half-hour he studies the street maps in his lap and attempts to stay focused, but the dead silence coming from the comm unit is starting to worry him.  
  
Will clears his throat. He turns around to see him looking markedly better than before, bandaged and cleaned up somewhat, returning the first-aid kit.  
  
"Thanks."  
  
He takes the kit and puts it back in the glove compartment.  
  
"Uh, this might...sound lame, but where...in God's name are we? I have...no clue...where we are. Jack, I mean, Agent Bristow wasn't...exactly forthcoming...with details after he came...and got me."   
  
He tells Will that they are in Taipei, Taiwan and that he's been held in the city for almost 3 days now. Will looks surprised, and lets out a hoarse laugh.  
  
"I was...halfway across...the world...in Paris like...2 days...before that. Being interrogated and then...being rescued by a Bristow." He lets out a breath and winces slightly, and tries to talk a bit more slowly. "I should be...getting used to this."   
  
He smiles at Will's self-depreciating brand of humor.  
  
"In Paris she was...I don't know how...to explain it... she just came into...the men's room and absolutely beat the crap outta...those men. And then in the club...she did this... this Matrix-like...thing from a table in...mid-air...and kicked this guy's head from here to...next week to save me. And then she just...hauled and threw...this guy against and down...the stairs on the way out like she does this all the time." A pause and then a small laugh. "Well of course...she...*does* do this all the time. Agent Bristow's...daughter...I mean. She does...the same thing...as he does."  
  
He tells Will that maybe he's been running around with the wrong crowd of people, as a jest. Will shakes his head.  
  
"No. I know...I'm running...with the right crowd...of people now. Now that I know...what they...really do. Even if it meant losing a few teeth in the process." Will says this with a quiet assurance. A pause. "I'm sorry...I'm just running...at the..mouth...probably distracting...you...from your job."  
  
He tells Will it's okay, he's used to having his ear bent by other people. Will nods.  
  
"Well...thanks. For letting me...bend your ear."  
  
He nods. They settle back into a comfortable silence again.   
  
Another half-hour passes and still no word from Jack. By now he has figured out and memorized at least 4 separate routes to get from the alleyway to just outside city limits where a CIA plane bound for Los Angeles awaits. But even with knowing how to get out of the city, it still doesn't alleviate the anxiety that has been building inside him for the past hour.  
  
He starts to think of contingency plans and worst-case scenarios. If Jack wasn't going to be able to get her out...  
  
The comm unit suddenly comes alive with a small burst of feedback, followed by background noise.  
  
"This is Marlin. I have Freelancer. Repeat, I have Freelancer." A burst and a following exchange of gunfire, both near and far, erupts through the comm unit.  
  
He can hear Will shifting around the back of the van, alert now.   
  
"What's going on---"  
  
He picks up the comm unit and speaks into it, saying he copies. He asks Jack what his estimated ETA is. He starts up the mini-van, waiting for Jack to reveal his current location.  
  
"5 minutes...no—" A loud gunshot, too close for his liking, comes through the comm unit. He jumps in his seat, his heart racing. Jack comes back online almost instaneously. "Dammit..."  
  
"Sydney! Is she all right?" Will's voice is getting much louder now.  
  
He yells into the comm unit, asking what's going on, over Will's shouts for her.  
  
"There is a plaza up the street from the alleyway, three streets over. Meet us there, in front of the youth hostel. ETA 5, maybe 10 minutes. And get Tippin to lie low and keep quiet. Marlin out."  
  
Will is clearly agitated now. "How is she?"  
  
He tells Will he doesn't know and then orders him to sit back down in his seat and to hang on for his life.  
  
And with a loud screech of tires the mini-van peels out of the alleyway, towards the plaza. 


	3. Chapter 3

EVENT HORIZON  
  
By: lucy2point0, email: wendy@devil.com  
  
Rating: R, to be on the safe side, for this chapter.  
  
Spoilers: Almost Thirty Years  
  
Disclaimer: This fantastic Alias world is SO not mine, but it does belong to JJ Abrams, ABC and everyone else who is involved with the show.  
  
Notes: Told from a Vaughn-centric POV. Thanks again for continued support & encouragement.   
Yup, the pace definitely picks up here....let's crank the action dial to 11. :D  
  
Feedback: Sure...  
  
Archive: Sure, drop me an e-mail and let me know so I can visit.   
  
He ignores the honks and profanities shouted at him by passing motorists and drivers as he weaves the mini-van in and out of oncoming traffic towards the plaza.  
  
He checks in the rearview mirror to see Will fumbling for his seatbelt but is unable to strap himself in because of the constant movement of the mini-van.  
  
He calls Will's name, and once more to get his attention.   
  
"What?"  
  
Eyes never leaving the road, he tells Will that from right now until they get onto the plane that he must do exactly everything he says without question, without hesitation.  
  
"But—"  
  
He overrides Will's questions by playing his trump card. A split second's hesitation, of doubt, can mean the difference between life and death for all of them, including her, he says. Sydney.  
  
He looks in the rearview mirror to see Will's face register shock at the gravity of the situation, followed by something close to surprise and then speculation as he realizes that this nameless driver knows her, knows her and her ties with him.  
  
He suppresses the pang of guilt. Do something, do nothing, and she may die. What better way to ensure Will's total co-operation, he thinks darkly, than to use the same card played to him numerous times by Jack whenever he had wanted to pull her out of a mission for fear of her safety or to protect her from CIA protocol.  
  
He asks Will if he understands the instructions that have been given to him.   
  
"Yes." The word is laden with a tone of resignation.  
  
About a block away from the plaza he slows the mini-van down due to traffic congestion.  
  
He calls out to Will again and asks him to look around the back of the van and tell him if there is anything of use. He hears Will move around the back of the van, calling out what he can find. A few changes of nondescript clothing. A wallet full of Taiwanese and American currency and credit cards. A length of rope.  
  
As Will continues to rummage around, he shifts in the driver's seat and bangs his right knee against something sharp below the dashboard.   
  
Looking down briefly, he faintly sees a gun holster mounted to the underside of the dashboard, next to his right knee, with a handgun in it.   
  
He pulls the handgun out with his right hand and brings it up for a quick view. It is a standard 9 millimeter handgun, safety on, and fully loaded, judging by the weight. A standard law-enforcement handgun and deadly all the same.  
  
He puts the handgun on the passenger's side seat and tells Will they are at the plaza now. He tells Will he needs him to be another set of eyes and ears as they look for Jack and Sydney. They should be easy to pick out from a crowd of dark-haired people, he tells Will.  
  
It is slow going in the plaza as there are people teeming on the sidewalks and partially on the street, enjoying themselves and equally frustrating motorists trying to get around them.  
  
He sees the youth hostel about 100 feet ahead and scans the area immediately around them. No sign of them, until Will speaks up.  
  
"I see them...they're about...2 storefronts down...from...the youth hostel. They're coming towards us."  
  
He focuses where Will says they are and he sees them at last. He sees Jack first, the taller of the two, looking straight ahead. And then he sees her. She is walking arm in arm with Jack, almost in a protective position, close by his side. She is still wearing her clubbing outfit, shivering slightly from the cold of the evening, but the blue wig is gone. She is walking with her head slightly bowed down so her hair is partially obscuring her face.  
  
She looks up and says something to Jack. He nods slightly and scans the street then, and then sees the mini-van. They pick up their pace slightly to get to the hostel. And with that sudden increase in movement he sees two Asian men, some 20 feet back, begin to weave through the crowd in order to catch up with the Bristows.  
  
The comm unit crackles alive again in the quietness of the mini-van.  
  
"This is Marlin, we are at the extraction point."  
  
He picks up the comm unit and says he copies and that they are 50 feet away, coming towards them. And that there are 2 men following them some 20 feet back. He sees Jack nod curtly.  
  
"I copy that. Marlin out."   
  
He puts the comm unit on the dashboard and reaches over to get the handgun with his right hand, switches the gun to his left hand and flicks the safety off. He tells Will they are about to pick up Jack and Sydney and to stay down low in case anything happens.   
  
He hears Will shift once more in the back and sees him disappear from his rear mirror view within moments.  
  
Turning to focus on the road with one eye and the other on Jack and the 2 men close behind, he begins to slow the mini-van down. And is completely unprepared to see her stare when he finally looks at her, rocked to her feet, at his unexpected re-appearance.  
  
He stops the mini-van and tells them to get in. She steps forward first.  
  
"Vaughn—" she begins, trying to slide the side door open, her stunned gaze never leaving his.  
  
He is distracted, looking for the 2 men following the Bristows, and tells her there's no time to talk.  
  
Suddenly, he sees a red laser point dart shakily across her face. He screams at them to get down and then a split second later the storefront glass behind the Bristows shatters.  
  
He turns to his left and sees a third Asian man crossing the street, aiming his laser-sighted gun at him. Reflexively, and focused on nothing but getting everyone out safely, he pulls out his handgun and drops the gunman with 2 shots to the chest from the open driver's side window.  
  
Amidst the screams and ensuing chaos in the plaza, Jack and Sydney pile into the mini-van with her going in headfirst.  
  
Jack slams the sliding door shut and yells at him to go.   
  
He floors it and hits the car in front hard, enough to move it half a car length ahead, reverses, and puts the mini-van back in drive in an attempt to pull out of the lane.  
  
"Give me your gun!" she yells at him, but by then a series of gunshots erupt from inside the mini-van. Jack is firing at the 2 men who had been following them (now brandishing handguns), through the open front passenger side window. One collapses to the pavement, instantly dead.   
  
The other begins to fire at the mini-van.  
  
"Vaughn, I can only keep the last man at bay for so long. Get us out of here," Jack shouts.  
  
The last gunman is still standing, advancing towards them, firing at the side of the mini-van, shattering glass and twisting metal.  
  
Heart in his mouth, he wrenches the mini-van out of the curb lane and executes a tight u-turn, banging into several cars. Eventually he manages to steer and speed the mini-van away from the wreckage of the plaza.  
  
He is operating purely on adrenaline now, looking for the street signs to lead them out of the city and towards the airfield.  
  
Over Jack's hushed communications with the pilot at the airstrip via the comm unit he hears her speak to him.  
  
"Vaughn, where's Will? Is he safe?"  
  
He tells her he's in the back of the van, under cover and out of sight. He hears her call Will's name, and then a muted response from Will.  
  
He doesn't dare look in the rearview mirror to witness the exchange, because he is focused on getting them all to the airstrip, but he can hear Sydney crying quietly, no doubt relieved to find Will safe and alive.  
  
"What did they do to you, to your face?" she says to Will, after a few moments.  
  
"This? It's nothing, it doesn't matter," he hears Will say to her. But the short pause before he speaks is enough for her to piece it all together.  
  
"They kidnapped and tortured you to begin with because they thought you had something to tell them...and when they realized you might not have it they contacted me for a ransom...to get the real information, as a backup plan."  
  
The tension in the mini-van is palpable.  
  
"Dad, you had Will tell them that he knew about the Circumference, didn't you?"  
  
"Yes." The word is said with great weariness.  
  
"How could you subject him to...to..." Silence. "Dad? Oh my God…Dad..."  
  
His eyes dart back in the rearview mirror to see Jack slumped in his seat, sweaty and pale. He sees what little of Jack's turtleneck, around the flaps of his overcoat, tinged red.   
  
With a sickening feeling building in his stomach, he watches her slowly reach over and pull the flaps of the overcoat aside to see Jack's entire left side soaked in red, and hears her gasp at the amount of blood that she is now surveying.   
  
She puts her shaking hand over her mouth in horror at the damage.  
  
"Daddy?"  
  
Sometime during the gunfight in the plaza, Jack had been shot. 


	4. Chapter 4

EVENT HORIZON  
  
By: lucy2point0, email: wendy@devil.com  
  
Rating: PG-13??? for this chapter.  
  
Spoilers: Almost Thirty Years  
  
Disclaimer: This fantastic Alias world is SO not mine, but it does belong to JJ Abrams, ABC and everyone else who is involved with the show.  
  
Notes: Told from a Vaughn-centric POV. Thanks again for continued support & encouragement.   
A little more S/V interaction in this one, I think. The pace is starting to ramp down...but gets a bit more complicated.  
  
Feedback: Sure...  
  
Archive: Sure, drop me an e-mail and let me know so I can visit.   
  
He wrenches himself from the scene and focuses on keeping the mini-van on the road. He takes a deep breath and tamps down the urge to panic.  
  
He is only partially successful; outwardly he sees his hands shaking slightly on the steering wheel.  
  
Half-wildly, he tries to remember in his father's diary if his father had ever found himself in situations like this... This feeling that he is suddenly flying by the seat of his pants because a mission went abruptly and tumultuously beyond the confines, or expectations of a mission.  
  
He half-laughs to himself, absurdly, and thinks that his father could have been Shakespeare for all it mattered; no description or exposition could adequately express what he is feeling right now.  
  
He wonders if this is the same phenomenon that she and Jack feel every time they been been on a mission and if it has become almost second-nature to them...  
  
She calls his name and repeats it to get his attention.   
  
He mentally shakes himself out of his reverie and chastises himself for indulging in it. He glances at her from the rearview mirror.  
  
"Vaughn, Will says there is a first-aid kit in the glove compartment."  
  
He tells her yes, there is one and asks her if he should get it for her.  
  
"No. You should concentrate on getting us to the airfield. I'll get it. Keep driving."  
  
He hears her telling Will to apply pressure on Jack's wound and then moments later, she squeezes in between the front driver and passenger seats to get to the glove compartment.  
  
He steals a glance at her and one look is enough for him. She looks determined, he thinks, with pursed lips and set jaw, but her eyes betray her; he can plainly see she is terrified for her father.  
  
She catches him watching her, and her expression shifts and changes. She closes her eyes briefly and when she opens them again the terror is gone, replaced by determination.  
  
And just as quickly she disappears from his peripheral vision with the first-aid kit.  
  
Balls of steel, Weiss once called him a while back. If only Weiss was here to see her in action now, he would likely strip that title from him and give it to her, without hesitation or prejudice.  
  
After a few minutes of listening to her tend to Jack and quietly confer with the CIA ground crew at the airfield with Jack's comm. unit, he asks her how he is doing. In a slightly shaken voice, she tells him.  
  
"He's been slipping in and out of consciousness. I...Will and I managed to get the bleeding to stop. The bleeding looked a lot worse than it really was, but he's still lost a good amount of blood all the same. The bullet made a clean entry and exit through his left side, a little high up... The CIA medic tells me it's very likely no internal damage was done, but he can't confirm until we get Dad to a hospital."   
  
He feels relieved, marginally, and relaxes his death grip on the steering wheel. She shifts, and moves closer to speak to him.  
  
"Are we going to make it to the airstrip on schedule?"  
  
He tells her they will in about 5 minutes or so.  
  
A short pause passes before he asks her how Will is holding up. She lets out a shaky breath and lowers her voice.  
  
"As well as can be, under the circumstances. He won't tell me what's happened to him the past few days, what was done to him or how he was treated."  
  
He tells her maybe he's just not ready to tell her yet because the ordeal isn't over yet. Or that he's just endured and experienced things that most people will never have to face in their entire lives. Or that he needs time to deal with it. He tells her she and Jack, of all people, should understand that.  
  
"Maybe you're right." Silence. "But I don't think I could live with myself if he develops a...a case of survivor's guilt or he gets into his head that things would have been better for me if I had never come to Taipei to rescue him... Because it would make things much worse that it already is." Her voice trembles and she continues. "For me...and for Dad..."   
  
He hears her whisper more to herself than to him, something about tomorrow not coming soon enough. He looks at her questioningly from the rearview mirror. Her eyes meet his.  
  
"I...I know when we get back to Los Angeles there will be a lot of questions and inquiries about what happened on the mission and before that happens, I want to talk to you about what's happened in the past few hours. I want to know how...you made it out and got here. I want you to know...how Dad found me..." She takes a deep breath. "...and how I saw my mother for the first time in almost 20 years."  
  
-----  
  
He watches the bright, sprawling lights of Taipei finally twinkle and fade from view from his window seat.  
  
He doesn't remember anything else after she made her confession about seeing her mother; not how they got to the airfield, not how they boarded the plane—nothing.  
  
Except that the certainty of what he has known and accepted for the past 25 years about his father will likely crumble in the face of the story she will tell him in the next few hours.  
  
A shadow falls over his line of sight. He looks up and sees her, standing, with a thick blanket wrapped around herself. He gestures her to sit down next to him. She does, sitting on a small crate.  
  
He asks after Jack and Will. She tells him that there have been no changes since they got onto the plane.  
  
He looks over her shoulder to see for himself. Across the plane and just barely over another stack of crates, he can see Jack, still unconscious and being watched under the eagle-eyed care of the CIA medic. And Will, a scant few feet from Jack, on a cot, no doubt asleep from exhaustion.  
  
Satisfied, he turns and looks at her now and looks at her, closely, for the first time since they were at the lab, separated by the door.  
  
She has wiped off the blood from her hands and cleaned up the streaked and smeared clubbing makeup off her face. She looks...almost normal, he thinks. Except for the slight bruise and cut at the corner of the left side of her mouth...and her eyes; in the dim light of the plane they are completely unreadable to him.  
  
She speaks first.  
  
"So...how did you escape from the water?" 


	5. Chapter 5

EVENT HORIZON  
  
By: lucy2point0, email: wendy@devil.com  
  
Rating: PG-13??? for this chapter.  
  
Spoilers: Almost Thirty Years  
  
Disclaimer: This fantastic Alias world is SO not mine, but it does belong to JJ Abrams, ABC and everyone else who is involved with the show.  
  
Notes: Told from a Vaughn-centric POV. We're in the final stretch. More S/V angst n' stuff here, but not everything is that dark...  
  
Feedback: Sure...  
  
Archive: Sure, drop me an e-mail and let me know so I can visit.  
  
He tells her what he can remember before he blacked out, why he came down to the lab. He tells her the story Jack told him when he had fished him out from the water and then had commanded him, more or less, to make sure Will was all right and to pick them up from an extraction point, if necessary, and get everyone to the airstrip.  
  
"It sounds exactly what he would get you to do..." she says, with a wan smile, after he finishes his story. Silence. "You...should really get checked out if you have any water in your lungs," she adds, almost reflexively. He nods; he realizes he should, but it is the least of his concerns right now and she can see that by the look on his face.   
  
She knows he wants to know about her mother. So she takes a deep breath.   
  
"Well, I guess I can start my story back at the lab. When I was trying to get you out. That guard you tried to warn me about came up behind me and tried to stop me. I knocked him out...or so I thought. When I turned around you were gone from the window. Needless to say, the guard did end up knocking me out.  
  
"I don't know how long I was out for, maybe a few hours. I...woke up in a small room, handcuffed and there was Khasinau. He...had this look on his face. I don't know how to describe it...like maybe he was looking at me as a younger version of...her. Like he was going to say just that. And...he had this tray of food and he told me I should eat something. I told him I wasn't hungry. He started to get up. I realized then that that was probably my only chance to ask him questions...about her. I called after him.  
  
"And then he turned around and told me that his boss could answer all my questions." A pause.  
  
He figures it out; he tells her that Khasinau wasn't The Man after all. She nods.  
  
"And then...she came through the door. She tells me then that she has been waiting almost 30 years for this."  
  
And the pieces start to fall into place for him. Her mother was The Man. And Khasinau had only been the front man for the operation.  
  
"I couldn't believe it was her, not until she stepped into the light. She looked...older. Worn. Like she has lived a lifetime's worth in the past 20 years. She sat down across from me, so we could taIk. I called her Mom at first...until I saw her eyes." She stops, pursing her lips. "She looked like Mom. Laura. But when I finally saw her eyes, there was nothing of her. Just...Irina.  
  
"I asked her why she left Dad and me. She said she left because she was told it was time to begin a new phase of her assignment. The new phase required her to leave Dad and me. It broke her heart to leave us, to leave me, she said. She said she was told that someday she would be given the chance to see us again; that we would be reunited.  
  
"I asked her what she had been doing in the past 20 years, how she got to be The Man. She said that Khasinau had been in charge of things, at first. Bankrolled by the KGB in the 1960s, he was assigned to determine what Rambaldi had been trying to create and if it was possible to create his technology. She had been recruited in the late 60s and became his right-hand man, figuratively speaking. Officially, she was sent to the US to spy on Dad. For Khasinau, she was also to determine if the CIA had anything on Rambaldi. And to eliminate anyone who impeded her efforts."   
  
She stops and takes a deep breath.  
  
He wonders if his father had been one of those agents who got in her way but squelches the impulse to ask as she begins to talk again.  
  
"After a few years it was apparent to Khasinau that Dad knew nothing about Rambaldi, so he had her...'extracted'," –she says this in an ironic tone, "and she ended up spending the last 20 years looking for and acquiring anything on Rambaldi.  
  
"The more information they collected during those years, the more the signs began to point to her as being an integral part of Rambaldi's work and prophecies. Because of that, Khasinau stepped down and let her take charge of things. She didn't say when it happened, but I think it must have been a few years back, at least.  
  
"Rapid progress in acquiring information and building Rambaldi's device didn't start until recently, she said, when they started getting some help from the inside."   
  
His mouth is dry. He asks her if she is saying that there is a mole in the CIA. She nods.  
  
"She confirmed it by saying she was sorry to learn that I had been persecuted by the FBI and by the DSR because of the drawing from Page 47 of the Prophecy." She pauses. "Only the CIA has that page, knows what's on the page and we both know that. So it stands to reason that if she knew about Page 47, she probably also knows everything else the CIA knows about Rambaldi."  
  
He remembers Jack telling the both of them on the flight to Taipei, that he had gotten information on where the Rambaldi device was kept. Jack had been evasive when asked how he found out that information. Nobody in the CIA would be privy to where the device is, he deduces, unless it was the mole. And Jack must have paid a visit to the mole.  
  
He still recalls his first encounter with Jack and winces inwardly. He had wanted to meet with Jack to discuss pulling Sydney out of Romania and ended up getting an eyeful of Jack's gun, up close and personal.  
  
He doesn't want to think further about what Jack must have done to the mole to 'coerce' him or her into revealing the location of the Rambaldi device. Because a part of him thinks that put into the same situation as Jack, he would do exactly the same thing to save her, regardless of the consequences.   
  
And that potential capability, lying dormant within him, shakes him right down to the core. He isn't far from that point as it is, he thinks, sitting next to her on the plane, now.  
  
"She wanted me to leave SD-6 and join her and Khasinau in completing Rambaldi's work. She said it was...preordained. That was the word she used. Like everything had been already set up and she just had to wait for some kind of divine sign, to tell me. I refused. I told her I wanted no part of whatever mad scheme she was party to. I told her I didn't believe in Rambaldi's prophecy.   
  
"I..I tried to convince her to come with me to see Mount Subasio. And she just laughed at me. She said she had seen and experienced too many things concerning Rambaldi's prophecies to doubt its veracity. Here I was giving her a chance to prove, for sure, if the prophecies did hold true for her and she refused, out of her own free will.   
  
"She laughed at me and told me she couldn't understand why I wouldn't join her. I had no real reason to live my life the way it was, now. Everything I held dear to me had been destroyed or would be taken from me soon enough, she said.  
  
"I couldn't breathe for a minute. I thought she had done something to Dad and Will, she had to have known he was in Taipei. And that she knew about you, drowned in the lab, or so I thought at the time. And for the short time I was in that room, I actually believed you were dead. That's why I looked so shocked to see you in the plaza driving the mini-van later.  
  
"And that's when I began to realize I might not ever see a glimpse or part of the mother I knew and loved, ever again. She has become a slave to Rambaldi's prophecies, focused on nothing but bringing his works to fruition." She pauses, biting her lip.  
  
"When I first told Dad I wanted to look for her, we argued bitterly. He told me, in his words, even if I found her, what could she ever say that would ever satisfy me?"  
  
She laughs hollowly. "He knew I was a fool to pursue this, and she proved him right on every count."  
  
"I watched her get up then, and tell me that she was going to keep me in that room for as long as it took before I would give in and join her by her side.  
  
"And that was when Dad stepped through the doorway, with a gun in his hand. He had heard the whole exchange. And he pointed the gun right at her and told her to free me. She did, but she kept talking the whole time, trying to keep him off balance. Calling him names. But Dad was quiet the whole time and barely said anything. His face didn't give away anything.  
  
"He stood there, and told her in the coldest voice I have ever heard from him that he intended to bring her back to the US so she could be tried for espionage and murder.   
  
"She looked at him and simply said that he was paying lip-service. That he was saying it for my benefit; that if I hadn't been in the room he would have likely shot her in cold-blood."   
  
"He just...ignored her and gave me the handcuffs and told me to cuff her. I did, and that's when I asked her about your father. I...asked her because I knew you would have wanted to know. If you had been in my place.   
  
"She looked at me, with these unreadable dark eyes and all she said was, his death was needless. He didn't have to die. But he was beginning to ask the wrong questions about how some CIA missions were being conducted and operated. He believed that perhaps the missions had been compromised somehow, by a mole or leak somewhere in the CIA.  
  
"It was done cleanly, painlessly. 3 clean shots to the heart, she said. In Mexico City. She walked right up to him in broad daylight and shot him as he left a warehouse. She shot him, she said, to divert suspicion away from Dad."  
  
To protect her cover, essentially, he says to her.  
  
She looks at him, and for the first time he is able to see her eyes. They are filled with sorrow, and regret. Not unlike the look she had when he was trapped behind the door, seconds before the deluge of water claimed him.  
  
"She said...if only your father never confided in Dad about his suspicions the day he left to go to Mexico City for a mission, and Dad had never mentioned the matter to her, he might still be alive today."   
  
She takes a long, shaky breath.   
  
"I looked at Dad, and he was shell-shocked. He told me he never mentioned your father's name but she said she knew enough from all the information she had gone through in his briefcase all those years to know who it was."  
  
He rubs his hand over his face slowly, taking it all in. So his father did know Jack well enough to at least tell him what was on his mind. From one fellow agent to another. Likely over a drink after work. Casually slipped out in innocence.  
  
"I'm so sorry Vaughn." Her voice wobbles slightly.  
  
He lets out a heavy sigh and rubs his hands over his face. She's still alive, he thinks. The last meaningful, living link to his father, is out there somewhere.  
  
In a terribly calm voice he asks her how her mother managed to get away from both her and Jack.  
  
She clears her throat. He can tell she is close to tears now. And to his surprise, so is he.  
  
"Dad knocked out Khasinau on the way in, but we both forgot about Sark. Sark and his men confronted us as soon as we got out of the warehouse where I had been kept and had us surrounded. He told Dad that he would let him go free if he would leave me behind in return. Dad told Sark he was in no position to negotiate, since we had her...as a hostage.  
  
"Then Dad did the unthinkable. He said he would give her up if it would ensure safe passage for the both of us out of Taipei. I tried to talk Dad out of it but he wouldn't listen to me.  
  
"Sark agreed, of course, and as soon as we gave her up she turned to Sark and told him to kill Dad. Right in front of me. Because he was a loose end and because he was clouding my judgement, she said. And because it was foretold. That was what she meant earlier, waiting almost 30 years.   
  
"Today was supposed to be the day that Dad was going to die and that I was going to join her in helping to achieve Rambaldi's work."   
  
The tears are starting to fall freely from her face now.  
  
"She...told Dad to give himself up and to die...an honorable death. He told her there was...nothing honorable about ruthlessly extinguishing a life--and that she should know that, of all people.  
  
"And then she became furious. And before she...could do anything else a gunshot rang out and there was an explosion of fire...just yards away from us. I think Dad shot some gas or fuel tank sitting just outside the warehouse. In the middle of the confusion we managed to get away.   
  
"We were a few blocks away...from where you and Will were when Dad contacted you to let you know that we were on the way. We thought we had given her men the slip but they found us...and started firing at us just as Dad contacted you....  
  
"From the time when Dad contacted you until we got into the mini-van...my only concern was to make sure that he stay alive. I wanted to prove her...wrong. I would have taken that bullet for him. I would. Just to prove her...and Rambaldi wrong. And we have...for now..."  
  
She glances over at Jack, and turns back to him, sitting next to her, and takes a shuddering breath.  
  
"You don't know how scared I was for Dad when I realized he was shot."  
  
He tells her he had suspected she was well and truly terrified, but not with the added weight of a prophecy bearing down on top of her terror. She lets out a shaky laugh.  
  
"What good could I have been to anyone if I sat down and blubbered and wrung my hands? Dad was sitting there in the mini-van, bleeding, fully aware of what she said. I...had to be strong for his benefit. And Will's." A pause. "And for you." Another pause. "And I didn't want you to drive the mini-van off the road by accident in a panic if I did start to blubber. Which I was close to doing several times on the way to the airfield."  
  
He lets out a half-laugh. Nothing like a little gallows humor to lighten things up, he thinks. They smile at each other, hesitantly, before she speaks again. She looks down at her hands.  
  
"I will probably spend a long time trying to live with the fact that she gave birth to me. Gave me life. But who I thought of as my mother, who loved me and raised me, no longer exists in her, if it did at all. It was the worst scenario I could have ever thought would happen when I started to wonder what it would be like to see her again, after I realized she could be alive..."  
  
He asks her if she feels better off knowing what she knows now, than to never have seen her again.  
  
"Yes," she says, without hesitation. "Because what I know now is the complete truth."   
  
She wipes her tears away with the back of her hand and looks at him.  
  
"And as soon as Dad recovers, we're going to find her, and bring her to justice. And stop this madness." For a brief moment, apprehension clouds her face and disappears just as quickly as she thinks for a moment. "Everything else can wait," she says finally.  
  
She means it. The expression on her face tells him she will do it, for him, and his father. And then realizes that when she said the word 'we', she was meaning the both of them. Vaughn and Sydney.  
  
He is stunned, touched, and is at a loss for words. But when he finally does speak all he can speak are two words. Thank you.   
  
"No, thank *you* Vaughn." She reaches out and touches his hand. Her grip is strong and firm. "You helped pull me and Dad and Will from the brink. From the point of no return. The event horizon."  
  
The event horizon, he thinks, instantly getting her analogy. The point at which nothing can escape from within a black hole. Yes, they came perilously close several times, each and every one of them to that point. But they all made it out, a little worse for wear, but better off for it.  
  
He looks at her, and closes his other hand over hers.  
  
And they stayed that way until the plane landed in Los Angeles.  
  
(fin) 


End file.
